Tag: NY Mets
Soul Man
Wilma walk-off fever last night through the mushy gray mist, and I can’t believe I’m letting myself get amped a little for this team again.
Just to recap: since an 11-1 start, this Mets group has floundered and flopped like a fish on the sidewalk and literally has not won back-to-back games, the definition of mediocre. And geez has it been depressing. It was sometime around the Braves series at Citi that I started to suffer through the stages of grief; culminating in the acceptance of a team that will probably never be outstanding unless the ownership, you know, goes away forever.
So when Beanpole deGrom whirled his 13 K game Friday I was pleasant but not ecstatic. But now after a Wilma Walk-off is it possible I’m letting this team get me amped up again? No, probably not. They’re deeply flawed, structurally speaking, and not as fun to watch as a team like the Cubs or the Braves. Too bad I don’t watch the Cubs or the Braves.
But the Cubs and Braves don’t have Wilmer.
Go with me on this one, because it has been my feeling for quite awhile, and it’s a little out there but if you hear me out you’ll probably agree.
Wilmer is the Soul of this team. Don’t know when it started, but that fateful night against the Padres in 2015 sure didn’t hurt his soulfulness. That raw-nerved night was like someone opened the compartment of a powerful electric machine and futzed with the wires, causing sparks and making the machine spin out of control. Wilmer was caught in the middle of something, and somewhere along the way developed into what I can only refer to as “soulfulness personified”.
He’s like the Ringo Starr of the Mets. Not the most talented but could you imagine the Mets without him?
I’ll do other Mets examples if that makes you feel better…
He’s like the Mookie Wilson of the Mets.
He’s like the Endy Chavez of the Mets.
He’s the Soul. The minute he is traded or fired or god knows what (knowing Wilmer’s penchant for the unreal, he will probably be brought down at the gates of some inter-dimensional portal by a two-headed dragon) this team will lose it’s soul, and things will feel very different. The 2015 vibes, the ones that echoed and bounced off the cave walls throughout 2016 and helped get them to a Wild Card game, the ones that were faintly heard from a distance in 2017, the ones that seemed to come right back and plop themselves into our laps during 11-1, will be gone forever.
Baseball Metaphor Time!
7-6 win last night for the Metsies that had a weird harbinger of doom hanging over it; a grayish cloud that resembled Cespedes’ quad, then a potential Reds comeback. But it goes in as a win!
Are the Mets beginning a new “chapter” of the season? Or, an entirely new “novella”? Gary Cohen referenced this once, about how the season is not really made up of different chapters of a book but individual novellas that sometimes don’t have any relation to each other.
The novellas can be divided up in a myriad of ways – a winning or losing streak, an injury-epidemic that begins or ends, the trading away or acquisition of a new player, or sometimes leaving for a road trip.
For this Mets team, it seems they have suffered through something like this already, with the dividing line being the catcher injuries? Or the Atlanta series at home? Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint the beginning of a new novella. Sometimes you don’t know you’re in a new novella until you’ve already been right in the middle of it. Perhaps they are already in the third novella of the season?
First being 11-1. Then the next being right up to that sloggy Sunday game against the Rockies.
Now a new one? We’ll see. It does feel different already, even from the past weekend. But it’s one game so who knows.
Baseball is so much a metaphor for life and the human existence, I can’t stand it! That’s why I love this sport. That and the dingers, and the first to third dashes.
Matt Harvey is Us
What do you suppose Matt Harvey was thinking about as he trekked from the clubhouse to the bullpen? Probably wasn’t something like “This is what I need. This will help me.”
In fact, he probably wasn’t thinking anything at all.
What do athletes think about when they’re not pitching? Or actually, what do athletes think about after they’ve just been told they are no longer a starting pitcher and now must sit in a small box at the other side of the stadium and may or may not be called on that night to pitch, most likely in a situation in which they are not a factor in the outcome of the game?
Probably nothing. But what do they look like in that second scenario?
Probably this.
Simon & Garfunkel has already been referenced, so I’ll save that one.
Instead I’ll call your attention to this “JIFF”, which is from The Graduate, the movie which Simon & Garfunkel soundtracked, and which the song “Sound of Silence” is prominently featured.
Side note – never understood why that movie uses the same like 2 or 3 songs through the whole thing. It was one of the first films to use almost all pop music on its soundtrack, so I guess I gotta cut it some slack. But it’s like Mike Nichols was in the shower while they cut together the second half of that movie.
“Hey we need some music here. What can we put in?”
“Mike’s not here. Just put in Scarborough Fair again.”
(Pause)
“Ok.”
That pic of Dustin Hoffman gives me such Matt Harvey vibes now. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch The Graduate again without thinking of this.
***
This whole team gives me a Graduate/Simon & Garfunkel vibe for some reason this year. Like a kind of wistful, autumnal gentleness. A quiet intelligence. Books and smarts. Probably because it is in direct comparison with the previous teams, which always seemed to be run on the fly. Oh Terry. Papa Elf. Bless him.
***
In summation, Harvey is fake emo. Harvey wishes he is emo. He always wishes he is something. He’s always been this way. Even in 2013. He was craving that Dark Knight thing. He put it over his goddamn locker.
Problem is Harvey has the wrong kind of self awareness. It’s not really self-awareness at all. He’s aware only of what people think of him, or really, what he believes people think of him.
We all have this. Some have it more than others.
It’s sort of disappointing to see it. Simply put, I thought he was better than this. But I’m sure we all want our athletes to be better than us. That’s why they’re on that field under the lights. When an athlete shows signs of being just like us, the dreaded us, we get disappointed. Kind of pissed. Angry at the player. People don’t come out and say it, but it’s underneath everything they say: How could you? How could you have feelings? How could you let those feelings affect your behavior? What’s wrong with you?
We used to love Bartolo Colon because we thought he was us. Beer-belly and all. But Bartolo wasn’t us. Bartolo had a peaceful zen-shine to him. A razor-sharp, mellow-yellow aura that most of us only dream of having in our everyday lives.
Matt Harvey is us.
Murky!
A murky cavernous atmosphere seems to exist in “April Northeast Baseball” or “ANB”. I wrote earlier that it reminds me of a wind tunnel, a sort of dark, spiraling tube that maybe a group of scientists and military dudes would carry heavy backpacks through, expecting to be transported to another time or place.
The murkiness can sometimes bleed out in all directions, with the players swinging a tad early or late, or hitting balls directly at opposing fielders. With the murkiness being front and center, it is easy to look at two-game losing streaks as perhaps the wind tunnel collapsing; the cavernous tube getting smaller as the scientists and military dudes get farther inside.
CitiField is criss-crossed with deep and billowy shadows in The ANB. The TV casts a blue pall. Why is The ANB always blue?
Comeback-capping grand slams make the murkiness more palatable. Especially weird high-ball-chopping-Cespedes grand slams. What was the deal with that swing? It was a captivating athletic moment in an already captivating ballgame. Cespedes seemed to somehow drag the bat through the air in slow motion and fast motion simultaneously.
I think the swing ripped a hole inside the wind tunnel, upending gravity for the scientists and military dudes. Their backpacks and gear jarred loose in the whirling scrum.
Fuzzy 80s Baseball
Feel the fuzziness….
Uncanny 2018 Wormhole Shit
The Mets are 12-2 now, as the great Bright/Kauffman/Crane swung low in the zone, and propelled a ninth inning walk-off, arms extended. High Flying! How you doin?
But I want to talk about the image above, because it fascinates and repels me in an Alex DeLarge-type way; in a creepy, dead-eye stare at the Korova Milk Bar-type way. Uncanny valley to the extreme. Unsettling and unnerving; the image wouldn’t stop creeping around a corner in my mind, won’t stop hovering above me silently as I try to sleep. Like I’m standing in my kitchen and the lights have just flashed and William Friedkin has spliced in a face over the stove hood.
Seriously, what the fuck is going on in this picture?
Couple of things. First, the faces directly behind Wilmer seem to be lit differently, more naturally; as if they are actually standing in an outdoor stadium at four o’clock on an overcast early spring day. Whereas Wilmer’s face is….not? Not lit the same way at all. Wilmer’s face appears to be lit from the side, unnaturally lit.
Second, notice Wilmer’s eyes. Notice his eyes in relation to his body. He’s high-fiving someone to his right, touching hands with this person, only he’s not looking at this person at all. He’s looking straight ahead, dead-eye-staring in the distance.
Not to mention there’s a strange arm that appears to belong to no one reaching across his body. And his neck seems to be farther above his shoulders than realistically possible.
The whole thing has a great high-contrast, deep-shadow vibe that initially attracted me; reminded me of older baseball photos shot on film. But this photo is strange, man. Some other-worldly stuff is happening here. Perhaps it’s 2015 vibes forcing themselves into the conversation, like they travelled through a wormhole and tried to make us think they were 2018 vibes but they got some shit wrong. Some shit that just doesn’t feel right. Uncanny valley shit.
2015 vibes
2015 vibes all over the place right now.
2015 somehow felt like the worst Mets season and the best Mets season simultaneously. There was a wire-tensed electric current running through it, underground ley lines linking one month to the next. Cave walls found in the outskirts of a small town near the Cape of Good Hope bore the ancient scrawl: “Flores, 2-for-4”.
I remember the night I thought “this is the worst Mets season I’ve ever experienced.” It was the night that Kershaw almost threw a perfect game against them. Everyone was saying before the game that the Mets would be lucky to even smell a hit against Kershaw, and they were almost right. My brother and I took a drive through the late evening sun to the local sporting goods store, with the broadcast sort of half-on in the car, and then sort of half-followed on the Twitter feed while we wandered around the place. I remember the setting orange sunlight coming through the big front windows, and I had that thought. “This is the worst Mets season ever”.
It got better from there.
***
There’s too much about 2015 that feels pointless to talk about now. Flores. Cespedes. Murph. Tejada. Neon sleeves. Wright’s slow-mo fist pump. The Washington sweeps that bookended perhaps the most exhilarating month in the team’s history (hyperbole!). All these and more moments that seemed to constantly burst the red seams of some metaphoric baseball (except in this case it’s not really a metaphor).
There were moments where I truly thought the team had transcended their physical bodies, playing in some hyper-reality. Some other-world that alternated between sun-soaked daylight and bright HID-lit nights. This wasn’t our reality. This was 2015 reality.
What 2015 was really about, in my mind, were the players who had been there forever, with the losing teams and the empty stadium and constant feeling that they were not ‘championship-caliber’. These were not the players that would be on the team when it finally found itself winning again. Murphy? Tejada? Duda? Nieuwenhuis? Eric Campbell? Jon Niese? They were biding time on the roster until space was cleared for the Keith Hernandez’s, the Edgardo Alfonzo’s, the Buddy Harrelson’s. Winning players. But somehow all had found themselves in the middle of a pennant race.
I’m sure every time a team starts winning after years of losing there are always a handful of players left over from said losing seasons, contributing, making big plays, getting a hit or two in the clutch. When Nieuwenhuis hit that tie-breaking blast off Papelbon in DC I think every unlucky player who ever found themselves suddenly helping a winning team probably looked up wherever they were, stopping whatever they were doing, with a goose-pimply feeling rippling down their arms, somehow knowing it had happened again.
***
I think 2015 ended up being a very singular season for me, and most Mets fans. I think if they had pulled it off, it would have felt right to put it up there with ‘69 and ‘86.
When I say “put it up there”, I mean have it sit next to those other two championships in the history books. I think it would have felt ok to put it there. Notice I’m saying “I think”.
Why do I even care about this? Why can’t I just enjoy my team’s success? I notice it happening this year too. They’re off to an 11-1 start and I’m half-worried about whether or not it ‘feels’ as good as their past winning seasons. What’s the deal? Do other fans think this?
Appropriation & #justgettinstarted
Appropriation is cool, isn’t it?
I found this picture online last night and thought it would be fun to talk about. First off, this thing has compelling composition: our friends Amed Rosario and Juan Lagares draw the eye up while at the same time our friend Michael Conforto draws our eye away – towards the left of the frame – as he walks away from the jumping dudes, creating a nice contrast to the whole thing. Second, our friends Mr. Rosario and Mr. Lagares are overlapping with the Marlins inane #justgettinstarted, which is actually based on a song by someone named Poo Bear (?) with a feature by DJ Khaled, Nicky Jam, and Kent Jones, meant to drum up some excitement for a rebuilding Marlins team. Whatever. Font is cool though. This overlapping juxtaposition between the Mets’ success and the #justgettinstarted logo is what I want to talk about.
Artists like Rauschenberg and Warhol appropriated all the time, taking objects thought up by other people, twisting them slightly to make them their own. To me, this is when art became officially Modern, capital M. An art history major would probably disagree with me, but when Duchamp walked into the Society of Independent Artists salon in 1917 and kluncked this thing down on the table…..
…you can’t deny that we had just been dragged screaming and leg-kicking into the 20th century.
Now, this “Jumping Dudes” photo isn’t appropriation exactly, because the Mets have not taken the #justgettinstarted and called it their own. We as fans haven’t done this either. But this photo is an art-piece because it has taken two images and juxtaposed them to create new meaning. Much like the Endy Chavez “the strength to be there” catch from 2006, this photo has come to mean something else. The Metsies are 9-1, winning like every day. They have the confidence and poise that comes along with winning. Things are going pretty well, and it feels like it can’t get any better than this, right? Ah, but according to this image, they’re #justgettinstarted. Keep watching, baby. There’s more to come, it says.
***
This is like a flat, emotionless, dream-state of a season so far. Maybe because I spent the first week in Italy? I don’t feel anything like I suppose I should for a team that is 9-1. Perhaps it’s “other-shoe-to-drop-itis”, preventing me from feeling full-on euphoria. It’s also only April 11th. 9-1 is super, but 1st place in June with a 6 game lead would be better. Flatliners need to wake me up here before I end up realizing I never appreciated this wealth and good fortune. Why can’t I appreciate this? I told myself after 2015 and then after the struggles of 2016 and 17 that winning is a state you visit, not live in. And try to enjoy your trip while you’re there. What kind of fan truly appreciates their team’s success in the moment? None here, I dare say.
There’s all different kinds of Mets fans, just like there’s all different kinds of people. But I would guess a lot of them have seen too much heartbreak to truly feel secure with 9-1. First place in June with a 6 game lead? We’ll revisit.
Time to Bust out a Bun, bro.
Evenings with the Unbored 